Thanks you for the massive response. Initially I though a little bit the response would be more like "Your DPS sucks!". I really enjoy people here, which have the same issues and particularly the same mindset on the game, guild and raidleading.

Until now a mix of your suggestions is on my todo list:
1) Speak the whole team (~20 min) what they want. What their goal is, and what OUR goal is. Should we try to get the best possible gear? Do we want to be as fast possible with progress?
2)Encourage ppl even more to look into their specific class abilities for a specific boss (Glyphes, tipps, videos, forums... - More down below)

@Karlzone:
(Details for Part 2)
What I do (Partly going to do)..
1st: In every raid invite I write at least 2 days before what we are going to do. Let's say we do Boss X on hc, which we haven't tried before. Something like: "Blade Lord Heroic - Please watch X video and inform yourself!".

2nd:
After every raid I tell people what were are going to do on the next raid day and ask them please to watch this and this and this (Same as above).

3rd:
For every hc Boss I open a thread in our forums with already linked videos, tipps, strats etc. I mark every tipp with an Icon (For Range, Melee, Tank, Heal or specific classes)

4th:
Keep on going encouraging them during/after/before raids to look up stuff or parses etc.

@Reflection:
Right now wie have around (at least) iLevel 495. Do you think that will be enough to do hcs only without farming gear anymore? My plan is to still clear ToE every ID (takes about 1 hour), but MGV and HoF only progressing (extending IDs..).
Also many thanks on your hint regarding progression order!

To be honest i think most tips have really been mentioned already, and i would like to point out something that was already earlier mentioned.
You have to talk to your whole raiding team and make sure to you are all on par and when you know the exact goals the guild as a whole have, thats when you can make the major decisions that might improve the guild as a whole in your direction.
A good example of this would be if your guilds primary focus is on progressing as much as possible without increasing raid times. Things i personally would change then is

1. How needed is some farm bosses to kill really (is gear still needed from toes?), do we still need something from stone guards hc?(obv you cant skip any hc bosses the time you are progressing on that instance endboss.
2. The never ending question about loot, if all you focus on is speed at which u kill bosses then you must maximize loot on the players that attend/play well preferably both. If this is not done then you will have to face facts that progress will go a bit slower then it might be. Same goes for putting in the right players for each raid instead of putting in people who want to raid even though they might not be as good or as needed this time(bring the player not the class).

To sum up, my personal recommendation is do the talk with your guild, if you are still unsure of what to do, come back here and mention what you guys want and iam sure the tips you would get are going to help you.

Holding people accountable for their mistakes is important. This doesn't have to require punishment, but as everybody else said, make sure they know why they died and how they can prevent it.

Aside from that, a lot of it does fall on your shoulders, IMO. It sounds like you need to do some assessment of your raiders. I don't necessarily mean start cutting weak people, but figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are. Then, when deciding which strat to use for bosses, keep that in mind. Do your raiders tend to stand in fire, for instance? Then 3 healing most HMs is probably going to help a lot. If your DPS are really strong and do mechanics effortlessly, then focus on studying the fights from a 2 healer perspective and learn the ins and outs of your particular healing setup. You linked blade lord being 2 healed with a priest and paladin. You had quite a few phase 2 wipes to people dying to the AoE damage. It's brutal. Perhaps it's time to consider 3 healing? Some guilds can 2 heal that fight, but whether it's your healers or their classes, they don't seem to be doing it. (Priests and Paladin's are not particularly mobile healers for that phase, actually, so I can imagine it being very difficult for them. I had my guild 3 heal with a priest, paladin and shaman for our first kill).

I've found it very helpful to read as many "help" threads on your new boss as possible, too. Find out why other raids were wiping and what they did to fix it. Then, when you see it happening, you'll be prepared with some ideas. While people can dodge fire or ice block a debuff before they die, it's not always that simple. Taking Blade Lord as an example, people are dying to Blade Tempest. Are they spreading out too far, thus taking too long to get sucked in before the whirlwind starts? You can have them collapse closer to the boss after the wind step goes out. Are there too many tornadoes that make it difficult to do that, or to reach unseen strike in time? Then consider moving the boss more often to get away from some of the tornadoes. When we were starting this boss, I read threads where each of those things helped guilds get their first kills. Wind step is killing people - again, is it time to 3 heal? Lots of guilds did switch to 3 and then get their first kill.

@OP: We are also farming all raids, but we want to get the maximum of gear for the next raid tier and we only do it if somebody needs something (only BiS items count ofc), but I think 495 is pretty sufficient to kill every boss. Most bosses aren't about damage or gear in general. Maybe Garalon but equip should be fine for him. Sha of fear and protectors, but those are the last encounters anyway, so you will get some more gear till you are there.

I'm also not into this "selfthink" thing. Some people don't want to put that effort into the game, especially if it gets casual. And then there should be somebody telling them the specialties they should so on each boss. This should not include on how to play the class, because that's what everybody should learn himself (but one could also help there). On the first hand one should give hints like mages can use greater invisibility to survive damage on Elegon (hooray it gets buffed in 5.2 )

Tomorrow - Thursday - we'll do our little What-are-your-goals-and-how-do-you-want-to-reach-them-Conversation before the raid. I let you know how it went!

@Cattlehunter:I completely agree with you. That's why I try to pinpoint the important stuff for ranges/class/roles. I think every RL of a casual group should try your advice.

@Dracodraco/Mctriple:
About 3 healers... Yeah we thought about bringing our 3rd healer. The thing is, that the monk is still gearing up, cause he switched from his shaman. Farther than that, is that our 3rd healer is doing kind of an education and is always really tired in the evenings. So we mostly bring him, when we doing normal modes to equipp him, and when his personal life is more stable, back to normal.

As, Mctriple, you mentioned, we died in the last phase a couple of times, because lack of healing. The thing is - I am the disc priest - I simple failed. So improvements for next week:
- Not failing at tornados -.-
- Using SS for the running back again in P2

Also our feral uses tranquility before we run and during running I (disc), the shadow and the feral HoT/Shield everybody.
Still one question I have regardin P2 Blade Lord: At 11% we try to run back on the left or right side to be there very fast. The thing is, sometimes we start to late (people can't get to the other side, because the wind already changed) or we start to early (people are on the other side, no boss, and the are caught in the tornados right were the spawn). Any advice?

@Dracodraco
One thing: You mention CD rotation: Something Else - SS - Something Else -SS. What I do is: SS - SS - SS - SS. Works fine, CD is only one minute. But I suppose that might be a useless hint, because you are much farther in progress.

---------- Post added 2013-02-06 at 09:01 AM ----------

Ah one more question: Andybody has a nice overview of all usefull abilities of all classes? Like Greater Invisibility, Deterrence Glyph, Warri DEF Cds... etc. Basically everything that could help a raid?

@Dracodraco
One thing: You mention CD rotation: Something Else - SS - Something Else -SS. What I do is: SS - SS - SS - SS. Works fine, CD is only one minute. But I suppose that might be a useless hint, because you are much farther in progress.

Thing is, you'll oftenly be moving, or not get the full duration of spirit shell to throw shields on people before the strikes. We found that before the second strike, I'd usually only have 10 seconds or so after the tempest to put up shields (33% of spirit shell lost), and we moved for the third during tempest, not allowing me to stand still and stack up shields on everyone. It can be used, there's no questions about that, but every other one of them will be "weaker" because of movement etc (also, remember that you'll oftenly not hit everyone with SS if you target the same person, due to 30 yard range limitation. It has to be someone standing in the middle of everyone).

Thing is, you'll oftenly be moving, or not get the full duration of spirit shell to throw shields on people before the strikes. We found that before the second strike, I'd usually only have 10 seconds or so after the tempest to put up shields (33% of spirit shell lost), and we moved for the third during tempest, not allowing me to stand still and stack up shields on everyone. It can be used, there's no questions about that, but every other one of them will be "weaker" because of movement etc (also, remember that you'll oftenly not hit everyone with SS if you target the same person, due to 30 yard range limitation. It has to be someone standing in the middle of everyone).

True, true. Propably will have a look into that too!
Regarding the "hit everybody". I just moved one tank in each group and cast SS on them. They normally have everybody in range.

Again (reposting ), as I for now don't have this 100% covered: Andybody has a nice overview of all usefull abilities of all classes? Like Greater Invisibility, Deterrence Glyph, Warri DEF Cds... etc. Basically everything that could help a raid?

Just looking at your DK tank, his damage is ridiculously low, I myself play a blood dk tank and I have about double the amount of dps on all fights of that logs (not counting RNG-Stone Guards and Gara'jal different phasings), for some fights even triple the amount.
I know your dk tank only has a ilvl 493 weapon and mine is ilvl504, but still the difference shouldn't be that big. After a quick glance in the damage done section, Soul Reaper seems to be missing for ALL bosskills? Also Army, Ghoul and Dancing Rune Weapon aren't used to the maximal potential.
In my guild we aren't that far in front of you, we're currently stuck at 7/16hc but our ppl are doing alot more dps in general, and a tank who does another 20-40k dps helps, too... If it helps you, you can add me on battlenet (rhapso#2688) and I can give you more specific advice on bosses, but there's for sure some room to improve

Hi, thanks, I'll add you as soon as I get home. Thanks for the offer.
There are 2 classes I generally have nearly no idea about them - DK and Monk. So any help on how to improve our DK DPS is highly appreciated.

Our DK Tank is a long term real life friend of many of ours. He is a very casual, calm and extremly friendly player. He plays good, but he just doesn't want to freak into stuff to much. But when I'll tell him, do this or that, he'll do it and he'll do it well. (For example he didn't do any LFRs to gear him up, and also his english isn't that good)

On generall DPS - Our Warlock and Warri often get WoL rankings, so I think they are pretty ok. DPS form the log you link is from 52k to 84k. From the wipe I linked it is from 60k to 80k. Can't really see a difference (Except the Tank DK of course!).

Well if it helps, I'm swiss so we wouldn't have to speak English
Also, Your log goes from 27-65k, not 60-80k (DPS(e), not DPS!), and mine goes from 30-80k, with only our warri tank being <50k and you having 2 dps + 2 tanks being <50k, as well as last phase bringing dps down quite a bit (moving a lot etc.) and even though you are playing it with 2 healers, look again at my log... We play it with 3 ;-) If we look at the part from 100% to 20% bosshealth, dps looks alright tho, but I guess you should try to get a smoother transition into the phase 2: save a cooldown like spirit shell and start spamming the raid at 22/21% to blanket your raid with shields, let your shaman take Heal Tide and use it as soon as you get out of the tornado-grip, that should help too. You can also try and depending on your dps to do it with 3 healers, if the transition is the part where you just die.
And I can't believe how a DK or Warrior Tank can die in the 2nd phase... Second Wind (Warrior) and SelfHeals (Death Pact, Rune Tap, Vampiric Blood, Bone Shield, AntiMAgic Shell, ... as DK). Most tries we ended up standing there alone w/o healer, because we could outheal his AoE for quite some time

You just have to cut out mistakes i only toke 3 min to look at your logs so i don not have a full answer for you on the last try the hunter and the other priest died from the dot and didn't use any defensive cooldowns

I will point out that Hunters do not have defensive cooldowns, barring Deterrence which is a DPS loss as no actions can be taken during it, and Deterrence would likely be better saved on this fight for the Unseen Strikes.

The only times I've died to Wind Step was when our healers were slacking and not switching their healing target fast enough (it does a ridiculous amount of damage very quickly on Heroic) or when I was out of range or out of line of sight of the healers (so avoid going around behind pillars if you have Wind Step and make sure your healers and Wind Step targets are able to communicate to ensure range does not become a problem).

One thing often overlooked in guilds like this is wastes of time. Stuff like people showing up late, long downtime between pulls, people fucking around (like MDing the healers or something because they thought it would be funny), turning up not prepared (Oh summon me need to respec/reglyph/reforge) etc... It can really add up to 10-20 minutes lost which when you're raiding two nights a week is pretty huge. When I used to raid 9 hours a week (3x3) we cut a lot of this stuff out and increased the amount we could clear by a lot.

As for people coming unprepared, not much you can do about that. I've been in top 30 guilds where members still turned up without knowing the fight or 3 kills in asked about a mechanic they'd not noticed before (admittedly tended to be DPS players as tanks/healers tend to know what to look out for). There's various guides or even the in game journal but some peopel still can't be bothered.

I'm not keen on extending even in cases like this. The gear upgrades will help a ton.

One thing often overlooked in guilds like this is wastes of time. Stuff like people showing up late, long downtime between pulls, people fucking around (like MDing the healers or something because they thought it would be funny), turning up not prepared (Oh summon me need to respec/reglyph/reforge) etc... It can really add up to 10-20 minutes lost which when you're raiding two nights a week is pretty huge. When I used to raid 9 hours a week (3x3) we cut a lot of this stuff out and increased the amount we could clear by a lot.

Thanks for the tips, I just feel like quoting this part because it really, really is true. That is the main thing I have been working on changing and it is really doing a difference. There is maximum one person who isn't there 15-10 min before raid. I've been telling them over and over again that at 20 o'clock we do not start invites... we start killing stuff.
Also after a boss kill. Make the tanks not stand around and look at the loot, but go and pull the next trash. It saves soooo much time and makes it a lot more enjoyable for everybody else.
Our old RL (he retired from raid leading so now it's up to me and one other guy) used to stand around for AAAAGES and explain tacts. This is another thing I have changed. Brief explanation and then seeing how it goes. See what goes wrong. After we have the tactik pretty much down, we obviously tweak stuff for more effectiveness, but do not sped a lot of time doing that. This has really helped us.
I always felt like, if you spend too much time explaining stuff you shit on the people who actually did their research and bore everybody out of their minds.
We now, in 3 hours manage about 25 pulls if we are on a progress boss, in stead of the .....12 (something like that) we used to.
But yeah... speeding up the raids is a nice tip

Hey, noticed this thread and thought i'd throw in my 2 cents. I'm a raid leader of a 25man guild, and this as you can imagine requires a lot of leg work outside of raids, so i'll keep this short and sweet for you.

The things I do after progress raids are as follows:
- Go on World of Logs, investigate peoples deaths and why. Could this have been prevented? If so how: More research into the encounter, being more comfortable with mechanics, not using healthstones/defensive CDs.
- I then run the log through epeen bots compare feature, this saves me ALOT of time as I dont have to use the shitty expression editor. What this does is that it shows you the amount of times people used class cooldowns (defensive+offensive), healthstones, fails on obvious mechanics etc.
- I then update the posts I've made on our guild forums prior to doing the boss with discoveries for our raid group, as blanket strategies often do not work in my experience.
- I request input from the raiders, as they would typically have a better insight in areas around then than I would.
- We then redevelop the strategy.

Repeat process until dead.

What i've also gotten into the habbit of doing is taking screenshots and making videos of discoveries to aid a lot.

I also make weak auras for oftenly negelected encounter mechanics e.g. Sha of Fear energy bar (this was a while ago).

Thing is, you'll oftenly be moving, or not get the full duration of spirit shell to throw shields on people before the strikes. We found that before the second strike, I'd usually only have 10 seconds or so after the tempest to put up shields (33% of spirit shell lost), and we moved for the third during tempest, not allowing me to stand still and stack up shields on everyone. It can be used, there's no questions about that, but every other one of them will be "weaker" because of movement etc (also, remember that you'll oftenly not hit everyone with SS if you target the same person, due to 30 yard range limitation. It has to be someone standing in the middle of everyone).

If you consider SS to last nearly 30 seconds from the time you press it (it refreshed to 15 seconds again every time you stack it with another PoH), it becomes much easier. For instance, when I'm healing the fight, I get 5 stacks of evangelism and immediately pop wings and start shelling. That's how early I shell to make sure that the CD is up for it every time. And it is up for it. Every time. It also helps that sometimes he takes 5+ seconds to do unseen strike after it comes off cd.

- I then run the log through epeen bots compare feature, this saves me ALOT of time as I dont have to use the shitty expression editor. What this does is that it shows you the amount of times people used class cooldowns (defensive+offensive), healthstones, fails on obvious mechanics etc.

If you consider SS to last nearly 30 seconds from the time you press it (it refreshed to 15 seconds again every time you stack it with another PoH), it becomes much easier. For instance, when I'm healing the fight, I get 5 stacks of evangelism and immediately pop wings and start shelling. That's how early I shell to make sure that the CD is up for it every time. And it is up for it. Every time. It also helps that sometimes he takes 5+ seconds to do unseen strike after it comes off cd.

Thing is, the fact that he sometimes waits +5 seconds is enough to allow the spirit shell to fall off if you pop it that early <_<.

HC raiding isn't for you guys if you are not willing to left the noobs out.

This is the harsh truth, it is the reality, the thing you are denying for a long time because you don't want to embrace it.

Well maybe there is still hope, you have wiped over 50 times and haven't gave up, good for you mate Keep trying and it will go down.
Either gear more your dpsers or you will wipe till they learn how not to screw up

Bad - This is a bad player, he refuses to learn how to play correctly.
Casual - This is a player that will let everything else take priority over wow.
Hardcore - This is a player that is fine with putting things on hold while he's on wow.
Bad/Good - Measure of Skill.
Casual/Hardcore - Measure of Time

1. Don't spend ages on tactics during the actual raid. Make good use of your guild forum to link vids/discuss tactics. Then during the trash leading to the boss quickly go over the tactics; don't wait till at the boss and be "OK, here are the tactics..." and waste raid time. Make sure you as the RL are familiar with all the different approaches to the fight, what all the different roles should be doing.
2. Get people involved in the tactics discussion. Try get a discussion going yourself "So for Blade Lord I was thinking we do this CD rotation, move at this % on the 2nd run, what do you think?" rather than just "Blade Lord is next and here's how we will do it". Ask for opinions, encourage people to read around.
3. Be able to assess what went wrong quickly to be able to address it. There should always be an answer to why did we wipe? When you make a mistake yourself be honest and own up to it, he nice but constructive when others make them, and encourage an atmosphere where mistakes can get discussed. Get addons that help track them.
4. Make sure you're not making it harder on yourself, do you have all buffs/debuffs available every raid? Get your hunter to gather up pets which provide the buffs/debuffs you tend to be short on and ask him/her to switch it based on your raid comp.